Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2017 12:30 pm Post subject: In a failure rut. How do I get back?

November was a promising month but this month I've only had 4 green days. I feel as though I've failed so much my brain is no longer interested in making me try. I do somewhat well during the day but the afternoons quickly go downhill and my brain seems to no longer care about sticking to the rules because almost every day has been a fail already, what is one more? I've totally lost motivation and feel very sad and angry with myself. And even more desperate to lose weight. My birthday's on Friday and I was supposed to go out with a girlfriend for drinks... I just want to stay home because I feel too ugly and overweight.

Firstly, Would you talk to your friends the way you are talking to yourself? What if one of them said, "I don't want to go. I feel ugly and desperate to lose weight"? I bet the last thing you would say (or even think) is, "Yes, you're right. You should stay home on your birthday." Talk to yourself the way you would talk to your best friend.

Second, Are you seeing progress even if imperfect? Life isn't perfect and good enough really is good enough. Slow steady steps to improvement will yield huge dividends over time but the key point is over time. It isn't going to be fast but does that really matter? Eventually it's going to be 2019 then 2020 and on and on and on. Why not take a deep breath and accept that you're in this for the long haul?

Third, if you're failing at the same time everyday there may be a particular trigger that is hitting you hard. It may not be obvious. Believe it or not, if I don't drink enough water in the morning, I'm susceptible to afternoon cravings. I don't know why and I don't even know how I figured it out. Maybe you aren't eating enough at breakfast or lunch? Maybe you're trying to restrict yourself in someway and it's triggering cravings later in the day? Maybe it's just habit? You can always try substituting tea or water for snacks and see if that helps.

You talk about being sad. I can certainly understand that. I encourage you to treat yourself kindly throughout this process but to realize it is a process and there will be steps backwards as well as forward but that if you commit you will most certainly end up in a different place than where you started.

What if it weren't possible to change your weight? What if it were like your height? Would you stay home and stop doing fun things because you're too short or tall? Weight is the end result of a slew of complicated hormonal/environmental inputs. It is not the measure of your worth or how much you deserve to have fun. (But you know that, right?)

I agree that the repeated failures are not in your best interest. I'd suggest you're trying to attempt too much. What if you made it about a food/eating life that feels nourishing and nice, acknowledging that weight change is almost a separate issue? Only you know what steps you need to take to get to that place. What might help me would be something like, ok, I'm not going to eat before 9 am or after 9 pm. I'm going to give my digestion a break during those hours. (As a plus, research suggests it reduces the risk of cancer (https://www.aacrfoundation.org/Science/Pages/can-fasting-affect-your-cancer-risk-sleep-glucose.aspx). That would be my small sustainable change and I would work out from there.

I will say No S helped me immensely with cravings/nibbling. I added a mod of 16:8 fasting which has helped even more. I usually eat breakfast about ten or a brunch at 11 or so and have dinner by six. Even with holiday treats during my eating window, my weight has been stable or dropping a bit over time. My digestion has improved, my appetite is much more normal. I'm losing fat from all kinds of weird places. No S is easier. I sleep well even when it's been five or six hours since my last meal. I feel like there's been a biochemical change. Truly I think constant snacking just keeps pumping you with these little jolts of insulin which make you constantly hungry/craving food, even when you know you shouldn't be hungry. NoS and IF fix that.

But then I'm middle aged (51) and don't have too much to prove weight wise. It's harder when you're young and motivated to look cute I just want to assure you that healing IS doable and it is really wonderful when it happens. Best wishes!

I hope you put on some cute lipstick (or whatever) and go. More important, tell your friend that you a feeling sad, if she is a good friend.

You deserve to enjoy your birthday on Friday, you wonderful, special person. Be kind to yourself. Start today. Try to make choices in the afternoons that are kind to you and to your body. Cherish your body, which has got you this far and deserves kindness, too.

We all fail, a lot, in life, especially if we are doing hard things. It's okay to be imperfect, to try and fail is the way you get there. When you fail, try to look at it calmly and without disparaging yourself. This happened for a reason - can I change my odds for next time so I am more likely to succeed? Watch and see what helps._________________I'm a 48-year-old mom and non-profit CEO
I am 5' 7.5"
Began No S at 184#, BMI 28.4 - 9/25/2017
Current weight 167#, BMI 25.8 - 8/8/2018

I've been through many patches over the past 5 years on No S when I couldn't string more than 1 or 2 green days together in a row. What kept me going on No S? Nothing specific. I just kept going. And eventually after weeks (or months), I would get a string of green days again.

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Each meal is a chance to succeed - had a snack before dinner, ok, well eat one plate at dinner and then don't eat again until breakfast. You're back to success!

Probably the most important difference between now and 5 years ago is that my red days have become isolated and minimal. So, I might cave in and have a chocolate when offered one at work morning tea, but that's it, the rest of the day is green. Or I might have an evening where a wine with mr. chef becomes a wine "and nibblies", but that's it, the next morning I'm right back to meals.

I'n probably just repeating what others have said, but I gently recommend that you take the weight loss off the table for now. It's obviously not working as a motivation. Join the club! If weight loss alone worked, everyone would be thin.

What do you dislike about your eating? Is it only that you think it keeps you heavy and thus, unhappy? The only thing that really propelled me on No S was the fear that my eating was going to keep escalating (odds are it would have) and that I would spend another X number of years doing the same thing, feeling way too full too often and not really enjoying my food. I saw that surrendering to the meal structure was my best defense against that, and I became very willing to get very uncomfortable to get good at it. And it was (and is) uncomfortable sometimes, but no matter how uncomfortable, annoying, irritating, and even painful it was to sit with those urges, I was NEVER sorry I put up with them, and nearly always sorry when I didn't. The overfull feeling and the disappointment were way worse! This process does take some conscious thought at times, but it's totally worth it.

I also wrote down the good things I expected to get from just meals, and most of them had to do with non-weight loss benefits. I read those over and over!

BTW, in case you're feeling there is something wrong with you, there's not. It's very typical for the brain to fight back against the new routine. It will stimulate urges and thoughts to keep you eating, but it's just a mistake on its part. It thinks you're threatening your body's survival. YOU know better. Try to see it as a two-year-old's tantrums. Be soothing but wait it out. You'll be so glad!_________________Count plates, not calories. Three a day. 8 years & counting
Age 64
SBMI Jan/10-30.8
Jan/12-26.8
Mar/13-24.9 Stayed at +/- 8-lb. for three years Sept/17 22.8 (but more fluctuation)
Mar/18 22.2

Hi @moksha I'd like to echo what the others have said, and say keep at it, I'm sure you'll get there.

To get started, maybe you could try focussing on the successes rather than the failures? I bet you have tons of successes every day. Did you have a single plate meal and not go back for more? Success! Did you resist a snack you were craving? Success! Did someone offer you a sweet in the morning that you turned down? Success! Give yourself a pat on the back for the changes you are making, then when you get a bit of momentum going, you can switch back to the recommended traffic lights.

Another suggestion is that maybe all three rules are too much to go for at once. Maybe try one at a time? For example you could cut out all 'sweets', but let yourself have other snacks or maybe seconds at mealtimes. Or allow yourself sweets as part of meal, but no snacks. You get the idea . For each step, get a good few weeks of habit building in, then when you're happy, move on to the next.

Lots of great suggestions so far. I am sorry that you are feeling this way.

I have followed No S in earnest since September, and that is the longest I have consistently stuck with any eating plan. (I counted calories longer, and very successfully in terms of weight control, but not without every several days allowing myself way over my maximum.)

I can only share what has worked for me, and it is A LOT different than I have approached things in the past.

1.) I made the no s structure work for me. S days are Tuesdays and Saturdays. Why? Because I don't have the self-control to go longer than that without S days. Weird? Maybe. But guess what? That is what works for me, and that is OK.

2.) I remind myself that the real goal is not to follow "Reinhard's Plan" or worse yet, "Reinhard's Rules." The goal is to follow an eating plan that works FOR ME and promotes MY weight loss. This is MY body and MY project. The framework may have been someone else's idea, but it is MY life and a lifelong eating structure... not another way to torture myself with more rules. My life has enough of those already. (I realize here that the "fence around the law" and failures idea is promoted and very useful for some people to maintain their behavior. And that's great. But for me, a severe perfectionist, not so much. I don't need more "rules" to feel inadequate in yet another area of my life when I fall short. Eating is a nurturing, life sustaining activity. Not something else to feel bad about.)

3.) While I keep in the back of my mind that my goal is to reduce my weight, I don't weigh any more than every few weeks. Again, the perfectionism. If I think of what the scale "SHOULD" be, a SHORT-TERM set back for a life-long project, I could binge/throw my hands up in the air. It finally occurred to me how self-defeating that behavior is. I mean, does it help anything? Does it make my weight any closer to what I want? INo! If I don't see the scale, I am more likely to keep going, setbacks aside.

4.) When I don't see the weight loss I wish for, I ask myself, "Is there anything else long term I would TRULY be willing to do to maintain my weight/lose weight?" And the answer is always "No." So I keep going.... with the mindset that while maybe I'm not losing weight as fast as I want, I am certainly not gaining. I remind myself of people who yo yo, maybe keeping their weight admirably low for a few years with lots of effort, eating sparsely dressed salads and whatever other tasteless "virtuous" thing consistently. Then, a year or two later, maybe more, maybe less, there they are again HEAVIER than they were before when they can't be virtuous anymore...and there they are older, with a slower metabolism, and desperate to lose even weight than they started with. After all of that "virtue"! For this reason, I believe that long term, maintenance is progress.

5.) I don't talk about No S a lot. In fact, I pretty much don't. No one needs to know what I am doing. It is my body and my food choices. No one needs to know whether I am "virtuous" or "cheating." This is a pact with myself and no one else. It was two months before I told anyone, and as of now I have only mentioned it to two people, and certainly not in any great detail.

I have a goal of losing 20 lbs and have lost 7 since September. I realize that is not a lot, but I am pretty sedentary, have had some health issues, have to deal with a real job and real life, and stress, but I am still losing comfortably, eating what I like, and it is more weight than I have lost in awhile.

Anyway, every person has different needs in terms of their approach, and I hope there is something in what has helped me that can be of use to you.

Regardless of how you proceed, you are not doing yourself any favors by being down on yourself!! I wish you the best of success, peace in the process, and a Happy Birthday!!_________________Strategic action, release perfection.

2.) I remind myself that the real goal is not to follow "Reinhard's Plan" or worse yet, "Reinhard's Rules." The goal is to follow an eating plan that works FOR ME and promotes MY weight loss. This is MY body and MY project. The framework may have been someone else's idea, but it is MY life and a lifelong eating structure... not another way to torture myself with more rules. My life has enough of those already. (I realize here that the "fence around the law" and failures idea is promoted and very useful for some people to maintain their behavior. And that's great. But for me, a severe perfectionist, not so much. I don't need more "rules" to feel inadequate in yet another area of my life when I fall short. Eating is a nurturing, life sustaining activity. Not something else to feel bad about.)

I am a firm believer that no dietary plan, no eating plan (which is pretty much what No-S is) no self-help or self-improvement plan will work for everyone. Here’s why: Years ago I read Live the Life You Love by Barbara Sher. In it she wrote, and I’m paraphrasing, every author or "change expert" sincerely believes that their program will help everybody. Those methods may help some people, but they leave many of us behind because they were developed by someone who left out what’s most important: who we are. She goes on to say that we’ve been conditioned to believe that if a program doesn’t work for us, we believe there’s something wrong with us. We never think that the program isn’t right for us. There are many yardsticks like this in our culture and we’re trained to measure ourselves against them no matter how little they apply to us. When the shoe doesn’t fit, we think we’re supposed to wear it anyway. (my favorite line in the book)

Blogger and cookbook author Pam Anderson must have read the same book, because in her book The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great she wrote "Diets are like trying to sell everyone the same style and size shoe. If this way of eating is forced and not really you, you’ll revert to your old patterns every time. Better to find a way to eat for life." She had given up on diets and designed something that worked for her. She encouraged readers to create something that would work for them.

Not only is there no one "right" way to motivate people to change, there's no one "right" was for people to accomplish change -- including weight loss. You are using techniques that were designed by and for someone else: Reinhard. While he and others have had success with this, that doesn't mean that it's right for you.

There are a lot of variations of No-S that will work for most people. The rules can be a little different for everyone.

Maybe you should be in charge of whether or not you eat then and not blindly follow a program designed for someone else and that clearly is difficult for you.

Is there one specific thing that causes you to "fail" frequently? Maybe an afternoon snack or dessert? Look at making that part of YOUR program.

There are a number of people here for whom the program as written works very well. But look at the posts and comments. There are many, many people who struggle with it. And yet they try to wear the shoe that doesn't fit. Find shoes that fit!

Reinhard's plan isn't written in stone. Chisel out the plan that works for you._________________"That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do. Not that the nature of the thing itself has changed but our power to do it is increased." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm sorry, but I think it is way too soon for someone who has been at it for only a month to judge whether principles that have worked for about 80% of the populations that live by them is right or not for anybody. The real value of No S often doesn't show up for several months. It sounds like harsh body judgements and WTH are the major problems here, not the plan. Those are essential to get over no matter what- except for the exceptions.

One of the problems with making any habit change is that it can take awhile before the payoffs of the new plan really complete with the comfort of the old one. There can be a honeymoon, but depending on the honeymoon to make the marriage isn't feasible.

Sure, this is a little like an arranged marriage, but it isn't as if we haven't all seen some of the competition, no? Are those other partners really going to be a good bet a year or two or five from now?

Did anyone already recommend reading the Why did you leave/why are you back? thread?

However, if it all looks too insurmountable now, that is fair. Before I committed to No S, I went through a period of feeling like it was all too hard and I stopped kidding myself about my true intention to change anything. Eventually, I got sick enough of overeating that I surrendered, knowing especially that I wasn't going to count calories or follow any plan that cut out foods.

If you get clear that you are willing to take a good break from "dating" those other "guys," we're here. And we're on your side either way!_________________Count plates, not calories. Three a day. 8 years & counting
Age 64
SBMI Jan/10-30.8
Jan/12-26.8
Mar/13-24.9 Stayed at +/- 8-lb. for three years Sept/17 22.8 (but more fluctuation)
Mar/18 22.2